Like Metamorphic Rocks
by Green Aquarium
Summary: "My friends were all I was, but now they're playing their chips in a different slot" Inspired by the punk rock song "Arnold Perlstein" by SpankY's Aside


They were metamorphic rocks, they were marble and slate, they had all gradually changed as the result of society's slowly rising heat and pressure. Arnold was the first to recognize this geological process in his friends, realizing that their personalities and lives were reshaping long before they did. Wherever it was Carlos shedding his jokey demeanor, Phoebe losing her diffidence, or Ralphie hanging out more with his pals on the baseball team. It was a betrayal of a weaker ilk, an unintentional one. Yet it stung like a jellyfish's touch to Arnold that the first, and only, group of people he considered his friends had drifted apart.

The closet person in the whole world to him was Wanda, who in many ways was as much of a high school outsider as him. She wore grungy outfits in defiance to her mother: punk-rock T-shirts showing her midriff, jeans that she tore herself with razors, coffee stained plaid jackets. Boys that showed her interest were met with her giving them the Rockefeller Gesture. Arnold was more her type of boy to hang out with, a lad preferring not to disadvantage or judge her.

Meeting up every school day for cheap lunch, Wanda playfully blew tobacco smoke into his face, while they sat together on the gray concrete, knowing it would annoy him but never enough for Arnold to verbally complain to her. Sharing an MP3, one earpod in Arnold's left, the other in her right, loud electric guitars drowned them in escapist sound. They spoke to each other of school, life, family, and on occasion death.

Sometimes Wanda would gossip on old acquaintances, telling Arnold stories about Dorothy Ann or Keesha that she herself didn't believe. Arnold meanwhile preferred to not talk smack about people he still somewhat considered to be friends, people he wanted to reconnect with. Yet it still hurt when Ralphie's teammates bullied him, and Ralphie, once one of his best friends, didn't step in to stop it, the boy watching as frightened as the other kids did.

"Ralphie's a wimp for letting those assholes do that to you. They're all wimps."

"Wanda, you've got it backwards," Arnold said with a fractured smile, "I'm the wimp. Why else would I be picked on for being the creepy loser who spends his days reading books about rocks?"

"Arnold, a brave man faces his fears every day. And I know nobody who would benefit skipping school more than you. I mean, you're a mess of emotional problems. You're as bad as me. So, you're extremely brave for coming here every day. That or you're the dumbest motherfucker alive."

"I don't know wherever to take that as a compliment or not." But she was correct, other than Wanda and decent grades, high school had painfully little going for it. And it particularly felt like a kick to the face by a pair of new cleats whenever he saw Phoebe in the hallway and she didn't see him back. He was torn between happiness that she had gotten over her shyness, yet also envy that she had abandoned him for a new niche.

"Don't worry about her," Wanda tried to assure him. Yet Arnold's mind continued to wander into unwelcomed places.

Arnold's parents were concerned over his melancholic viewpoints, and so he met weekly with a counselor named Mr. Brown. Not that he cared much, it was nice to have somebody at school besides Wanda who didn't laugh when he spoke his mind. Still, Arnold felt that Mr. Brown, as well-meaning as he was, couldn't help him much beyond listening. Wanda's mom sent her to see a counselor as well, though she was much more caustic to her assigned aide.

The two of them didn't talk about the future after Jefferson High School, perhaps because they worried it would be worse, perhaps because they feared leaving each other. But Arnold wanted to go to university for a geology degree. Wanda meanwhile was both aimless and petrified about adulthood, not wanting to end up like her mother, or any other adult currently in her life for that matter.

The school bell rang, signaling that the precious lunch hour had ended. Both of them stood up. Arnold gave Wanda a stick of fresh gum after her smoke, as he did every day. The conversation of Ralphie's supposed cowardice had raised a question to Arnold.

"Wanda, if you're there next time those psychotic, violent freaks target me, what would you do?"

Wanda stamped out her cigarette on the ground. "I'd fucking kick their asses."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it Perlstein. I'll see you tomorrow. Ace that English test for me. I must be avenged by my allies in Mr. Booker's class," she joked. Then she was gone.

Arnold realized that another deadening 24 hours of life wouldn't hurt just to talk to her again.


End file.
